Justice: Crane has passed test with MLB commissioner Selig

I have no way of knowing whether Jim Crane is a racist or a sexist. However, I do know Bud Selig.

He’s a 76-year-old Jewish man who has felt the sting of anti-Semitism during his long and wonderful life. He’s also one of Hank Aaron’s closest friends. Through Aaron, he has learned far more about racism in this country than he ever wanted to know.

One day in a Milwaukee hotel room, Selig sat down and read a binder of letters Aaron received as he prepared to pass Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list in 1974.

Through the years, those letters have angered Aaron at times and saddened him at times. That day, he simply wanted to share some of the things he experienced during a time that should have been among the best in his life.

Selig knows Rachel Robinson, too. Through her, he has learned of her husband Jackie’s amazing life. Jackie changed the world forever, and as Martin Luther King Jr. said years later, it was baseball as a social institution that first forced a lot of people to see the world differently than they’d ever seen it.

During his 19 years as baseball commissioner, Selig has worked tirelessly to create opportunities for women and minorities in the front offices of baseball’s 30 teams and in its central office.

Richard Lapchick, a University of Central Florida professor who tracks such things, has consistently given baseball high marks for its employment of minorities in front offices.

Expanded outreach

When the number of African-Americans playing baseball began to decline a decade ago, Selig didn’t just wring his hands and say, “Isn’t this terrible?” He began ordering the construction of academies all over the country. In fact, there’s one right here in Houston run by former HISD athletic director Daryl Wade.

The truth is that Selig doesn’t know if African-American kids will ever return to baseball diamonds in significant numbers. Baseball can build a diamond on every corner, but as long as high school programs are being cut and as long as the NCAA allows so few baseball scholarships, it will be a challenge.

Selig has had those statistics cited time and again, and he has nodded and listened. And he has decided to see if he can do something about it anyway.

At last count, baseball has either opened or is building six of these urban academies, with more on the way. They’ll be a place for kids to do homework, to meet their friends and to play baseball. More than 100 academy players have been drafted.

Frank Robinson, Willie Mays and Bob Gibson are about as tough and unforgiving as any three men you’ll ever meet. But all of them believe in Bud Selig, believe his heart is in the right place and that he wants to do the right things in terms of racial fairness.

I appreciate that the local chapter of the NAACP has given its seal of approval to Crane’s owning the Astros, but I trust Selig’s judgment more. I don’t know what’s in Crane’s heart, and neither does the NAACP. I don’t know what’s in Drayton McLane’s heart, either. I do know that virtually all of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s charges and fines dealing with racism or sexism against Crane were dropped or rescinded. I also know that people sometimes make mistakes and eventually come to see the world differently than they once saw it.

I remember the words of former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey when he was asked about the nation’s affirmative action laws.

“Without them, I would have surrounded myself with people just like me,”’ he said. “They’ve forced me to listen to and understand people I might not have understood.”

Monday meeting

Selig met Crane for just the second time Monday and is expected to support his $680 million purchase of the Astros. Selig already knew plenty about Crane before their meeting and never would have allowed the sale of the Astros to get this far if he weren’t comfortable with him.

I’ve known Selig for almost 30 years, and if he thought there was an ounce of racism or sexism in Crane’s bones, he never would allow him to own a major league baseball team.